[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I’ll never forget the first time I met one-on-one with Dr. Howard Hendricks, one of my leadership heroes. I had waited nearly a month to get on his schedule and finally was slotted for 15 minutes to sit with him in his office.
I entered his office a little starstruck. And I started talking. What seemed like five minutes later, he looked at me and said “Mac, do you have a question for me? We only have about two minutes left.“
I lost a golden opportunity because my desire to impress him overtook my desire to learn from him. Instead of asking and listening, I talked.
Fast forward many years later, I was sitting with a young church planter in LA when we discovered we had a mutual friend. He pulled out his phone, snapped a quick selfie of the two of us, sent it to our friend and said, “Hey, look who I’m having lunch with.”
Within seconds our friend replied with these works, “Ask big questions.”
I love that advice. I now try to follow it anytime I meet with a big leader. A “big leader,” by the way, is simply anyone who is further along than you or someone you admire for how God has used them.
Each time we sit with someone who knows more, has accomplished something we respect, has led on a bigger level, has a marriage we admire or parenting skills that put us in awe, these are all golden opportunities for us to learn and grow.
Recently, I flew to Arizona to meet with someone I consider to be a big leader. On my flight out, I got out my notebook and wrote out 10 strategic questions I wanted to ask that I felt would help grow my leadership. Thinking through specific questions ahead of time helped me maximize the time I had with this leader.
Here are some questions you can use whenever you’re meeting with a big leader:
- How would you describe your leadership style?
- Who has influenced your approach to leadership?
- Which books have most shaped you?
- What is your approach to developing those you lead?
- What do you attribute to being the greatest contributing factor to your church’s growth?
- What ingrained a “movement mentality” in your spirit? How do you plan on reproducing that in others?
- What does your church do well?
- How would you describe your strategic approach to planting a church in this culture?
- What are the things you find yourself telling church planters over and over again?
- How have you seen your role change in your church plant at the various growth barriers/levels?
- What is your greatest concern right now in your leadership? What are the factors causing that?
- How are you balancing the time between investing in key leaders who will stay and in key leaders who you’re sending out?
- How well are you managing your time by keeping top priorities to a minimum? What are the greatest challenges in doing so? If you’ve been successful at it, what has led to your success?
- What are your biggest challenges with leadership development?
These questions will serve you well if you remember to do the other part of the equation: Ask and Listen.
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